Information extraction and integration from heterogeneous, autonomous data resources are major requirements for many spatial applications. Geospatial analysis for scientific discovery involves identification of relevant information resources, extraction and fusion of requisite subsets of the information, application of spatial analytical techniques and visualization of the results in an appropriate form. The motivating application domain underlying this research is marine environmental management, although the principles discussed apply to a wide range of scientific disciplines. The research discussed in the paper focuses on integration of data sources, data exploration and interactive data analysis. A knowledge base is used to capture the semantics of the spatial, temporal and thematic dimensions at a domain level, and the context-aware framework exploited to meet the requirements of a varied and distributed user community with differing objectives.
Zarine Kemp, Lei Tan, Jacqueline L. Whalley